Original Letter

France.

3rd March 1918

My Dearest Maidie:–

Every day a letter but to-day it was a lonesome one. Poor old Baby, she was a lonesome coon when she wrote cette lettre. But you mustn’t ever be blue, Dear, for lo! in a scant four months and the odd day or two shall we not be together laughing about it all. And above all you must not worry about my safety – its a joke, you know, because I am as safe as a church – honest, I am. And right at present – well I am as far from danger as you are and just as comfortable. But even when I am in I am tout à fait safe so please keep on never worrying. I didn’t have half a sleep in my good bed last night – not blooming ’arf, I didn’t. I never wakened or stirred even from ten last night until seven this morning. Now when I am sleeping on a floor – I don’t ever sleep like that generally I waken up plusière foisand listen to the rats, getting the odd thrill from the thought that at the very moment one might have crawled down inside my blankets and be asleep there. But they don’t faze me very much any more. I am getting tough, I expect – seasoned campaigner – that sort of thing.

Charley Holmes and I have a good idea. We are going to draw our own rations and the bonne femme at his house is going to cook them – this will set us back two francs per week per snout. In addition we will purchase the occasional ouef ( that’s not spelled right!) and so live in affluence and luxury. Its a great life and only a little over four months to another leave! All my indisposition of the past two or three weeks have vanished and I am feeling finer than silk. At the same time I am far more lonesome than ever before. What have you done to me, Dear? I know I am bewitched properly. I just dream and wonder all day long, Dearest, I love you all the time. But why wouldn’t I? For you are the dearest, sweetest angel that ever did happen. I adore you, Sweetheart.

rats

Note

Along with lice and wet feet, rats were among the worst afflictions of trench life. Both brown and black rats multiplied in the trenches and on the battlefields, feeding on decaying corpses and on the army’s food scraps and waste. Not content with foraging in No Man’s Land on the traces of food still clinging to the tin cans the men threw out of the trenches, rats invaded the trenches themselves. They grew extremely bold, snatching food that had been laid down for only a few seconds and crawling over men’s faces as they slept at night. These corpse-fed beasts also grew huge—some contemporary reports claim as large as cats. Apart from being a nuisance, the creatures engendered a profound revulsion, even horror, in the soldiers, perhaps because it was known that they ate the bodies of dead men (very often beginning with the eyes). Although the men were forbidden to shoot rats (since it was considered a waste of valuable ammunition), they sometimes did—as well as devising numerous other methods for killing them by clubbing, bayoneting, and so on. Since a pair of rats can produce 800–900 offspring in a year, these efforts were futile and the rat population remained robust throughout the war.

Source: “Trench Rats,” First World War.com, updated 22 September 2002, http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/rats.htm, accessed 7 October 2008; “Feature Articles: Life in the Trenches,” First World War.com, updated 24 January 2004, http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/trenchlife.htm, accessed 7 October 2008.